Supervisor: Let me now introduce the committee for your PhD defense...

Me (internally): He's summoning mini-bosses!

Of course, all these teams have names of "Grp-..." making things so much clearer.

Image showing MS Teams, and within that the tab Teams, and within that the option of Teams...

My institution insists on using Microsoft products. Within Microsoft Teams, there is a tab labelled "Teams". Within that tab, I have two sets of "Teams", one labelled "Classes" and the other "Teams". So to locate a particular discussion, I have to open Teams, go to Teams and expand Teams.

A remarkable clear explanation of the difference between non-interacting and quantum tunnelling.

Sci-fi authors - do hit up a physicist (I guess it doesn't *have* to be @chanda.blacksky.app ) to ask about these things. Often real science is way cooler and weirder than you might think.

Short news bite on Quantum Guitar by FQxI.

He also said "Things can only get better" so how can I trust him now?

Elise Crull spoke to us at @perimeterinstitute.ca about Hertha Sponer, who was one of the first women in Germany to earn a PhD in physics, and a pioneer of quantum chemistry.

Realized this dropped context - posting about getting rejected from grad school. Part of a long list of "academia kicks you in the teeth" moments, mostly around job applications.

Applying for postdocs was brutal, and faculty jobs? Not wanting to dredge up that beating any time soon...

I spent a small fortune on travel to and taking the GRE, application fees, etc. I begged academics for reference letters and had no idea what the hell to write in a "Personal statement". Result: rejection letters from almost everywhere I applied.

I got two offers and no clues on how to choose.

ReproNorth: “We’re telling our own story” - The Gregson This event will be a celebration of a photography project ...

Can't wait to share our participatory #Photography exhibition in #Lancaster @ the #Gregson on 22nd May 7:30-11:00 pm! The work is about #ReproductiveJustice in N. England by people w/lived experience of social inequity and representatives from community orgs.

Details: gregson.co.uk/event/repron...

Also your goal to "develop and validate scalable indicators that can identify novelty in research" looks like you want just another way to boil complex research down to a number which will be gamed like every other index (Citation count, h-index etc) and contribute yet more bullshit to research.

Email text reading: "To David Sloan, The UK government's Metascience Unit and the University of Sussex are keen to receive your expert assessments on the novelty of selected publications within your expertise. We have matched your work (Exploring pedagogical culture for accessibility education in computing science. (DOI: 10.1145/2899475.2899490)) as relevant to at least one publication in our project, which we would like you to assess."

Not a great sign that your metascience project will be able to access expert assessment when you match me to a research area nowhere near my own, based on a paper I didn't write.

It's going to be embarrassing when we find out that quantum gravity is just three Ising models in a trench coat.

Aswathy told us that her essay began with a number from a failed calculation... "I looked it up expecting nothing and found that independent biological systems - cortical columns, capillary networks, the developing embryo had been converging on it for millions of years."

Graphic showing two bar graphs. On the left Labour leaflet's bar graph, titled "Breaking: There's one point in it." (Labour 28%, Reform 27%). On the right the results (Green 40.6%, Refore 28.7%, Labour 25.4%).

In a two horse race, Keir Starmer's Labour came third.

If my PhD student/postdoc moves to a career they want after their work I consider it the same success as if they went on to another academic position. Colleagues who move into industry jobs are successes.

Having a taboo on talking about leaving is a sign of a cult.

Super excited to read this essay which just won the @fqxi.org essay contest!!

“How Quantum is the Skin? A Clinician’s Perspective on Life at the Nanoscale"

Very much in convo with my essay The Physics of Melanin 🥹

🧪

qspace.fqxi.org/competitions...

Trombonist moved out. Flautist moved in.

Travelled for ages to give a talk I could have given from home. Pretty sure the universe is just messing with me at this point.

Due to a blizzard, I had to give a talk via zoom from my hotel room.

Guy in the next room: now is an excellent opportunity to practice my trombone!

I've been getting 2-3 per week of these for the past decade. Quite often I'm invited to conferences which are clearly scams, and way out of line with my research - ranging from dentistry to archaeology.

I have noticed a steady increase in the number of predatory journal invitations recently.

Great article by Colin Stuart, interviewing David Wallace. Part of a series on academic journals over at @fqxi.org on QSpace.

The power of the kitchen timer is key to my ever getting work done. Time for research, time for non research work. One they hit their limits i can give myself time off without guilt.

"English-Scotts-Irish" seems like a very specific way to say you don't like the Welsh.

Very nice work, well done! I've always loved a bit of numerical relativity in cosmology, particularly in that awkward Mixmaster phase, lots of weird and wonderful dynamical phenomena.

Relief as England manage to scrape past a superior Italian side in the World Cup.

...The T20 Cricket World Cup

Meet the 8 winners of our "How Quantum is Life?" essay competition with Paradox Science Institute.

$53,000 in prizes. And, as our Chief Scientific Officer David Sloan puts it, "a set of fantastic essays which give us insight into the nascent field of quantum biology."

This Valentine's Day, we'll be talking about life, not love. The winners of our 'How Quantum is Life?' competition are revealed 14 February.

Who's going to share the $53,000 prize pot?

The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events

I once wrote a paper broadly related to the idea - www.nature.com/articles/s41... It turns out that it's quite hard to kill *everything* on earth.